Bernie Sanders is (by far!) the most popular politician in America

2002 wasn’t great, either. If 45 manages to provoke a war (no chance he’d do that, right?) before 2018…

5 Likes

What I’m afraid of is that someone else will “provoke” a war. If he starts something unnecessary, and Congress falls in line, then that might end the Republican love affair with nincompoops (at least for one cycle). But if he responds to North Korean Trump doing something stupid? We’re fucked.

1 Like

We’re the superpower at a distance. The superpower next door will have none of that. North Korea will continue to do what it is they do. We are their useful enemy, but their dangerous friend next door, well, sleeping dragons and all that.

We have a Dem Senator with a job on the line, but no way of introducing anyone new, unfortunately. It’s all risk, no reward.

2 Likes

I think, given the circumstance, that Dems will turn out heavily, and there will be at least some Republicans who aren’t authoritarian bootlickers (though probably not as many as I’d wish). Still, between the GOP’s increased gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement, they’ll have a tougher battle to gain control of the House than 2006. Having a Constitution granting so much power to the states over elections is a pretty fatal flaw.

4 Likes

Would that make the mainstream Democrats who are opposing Bernie antidisestablishmentarian?

1 Like

I assume you mean that there is no option for write-in votes and such, which blows. The only option is to not vote for that election and vote for everything you can manage to so that the voter turnout raises for other areas.

That data is absolutely absorbed and crunched, so if Prop A gets a huge increase and participation while Billy Smith (unopposed D) has low turnout any party will want to get that turnout to their candidates.

Nope. I mean it’s just a really sleepy election in my particular area. There’s not a lot going on with the exception of the Senate race. Otherwise it’s just muni and county races. Our State senator isn’t up, our state rep isn’t up, the governor isn’t up, our congressional rep isn’t up… and the Dems have the muni/county race in the bag. We just elected out current mayor, too. It’s not that there aren’t desirable candidates, but that there aren’t races for them to participate in.

1 Like

It’s irrelevant, because the problem isn’t just with specific politicians, it’s with how the system is essentially rigged to give the established political parties such an advantage that third parties can make little to no headway. This is why Sanders ran as a democrat, because he saw what happened to previously popular candidates like Nader unable to make a dent because of how rigged the system is in favor of the two parties.

The only way to make any political changes is through the system we have already. That will be true until we have real changes to our election systems in a way that doesn’t reinforce the power of the current political parties.

5 Likes

Yes, but he had already served as the President, he lost that election, and the parties were not as corporatized, centralized, and entrenched as they are right now.

2 Likes

People are fairly far to the left, at least when considering the steady diet of anti-left-wing propaganda that’s been shoved down our collective throats since the 50s. People don’t really know what communism is, but they sure do hate it a lot. And, they think socialism is communism is soviet-style totalitarianism. Propaganda works.

6 Likes

*Vomits.*

I suspect if it came down to a race between the two, all of the blanket sexism accusations that were thrown at Bernie supporters like so much rice at a wedding would be rapidly replaced with accusations of racism from the establishment. I’m glad that I missed a lot of that crap when it was Obama v. Clinton and the Oppression Olympics had come to town.

(Although Warren is definitely a lot more palatable to the establishment than Bernie is.)

3 Likes

Warren is more palatable to the establishment than Sanders, but she’s no Cory Booker.

Still, I’ll take Cory Booker in a New York second over this absolute shit show we’ve got right now.

3 Likes

You and me both, good buddy. You and me both.

4 Likes

I wouldn’t expect anyone else with Obama’s charisma to come along in a hurry; that’s a tall order.

3 Likes

I already have a third party, no need to start one from scratch. It’s in every US state already.

Almost nobody has the cojones to vote third party, though. Except of course people who are considered (with some justification!) to be the lunatic fringe. You have to stand with hippies and commies to vote for a viable third party; quelle horreur!

7 Likes

Why? Because people will blame you for getting GWB elected 16 years later? Hell, they’re blaming me for Trump, even though I voted for Clinton, just because I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about their candidate.

I’m what the rest of the civilized world considers centrist, maybe center left at most. In 20 years, the rest of the US will catch up to where I am now. But here and now, I’m lunatic fringe. That’s okay, I’ll wait for the establishment Democrats to catch up, like I always do.

5 Likes

In which case, it doesn’t matter who you put up, as far as that goes.

2 Likes

Right, but the point of the article was that Bernie is the most popular politician. One reason why, in addition to his exemplary life, is that he has never been the subject of a coordinated negative campaign. I’m saying his popularity would go down after such a campaign, not that it would finish him off. He could win, but I think it’s not as inevitable as the article implies. Like the Occupy protesters and Black Lives Matter, he has re-focused attention on issues that have been sublimated which is healthy for our democracy. However, we should be realistic and not get too cocky because of these polls.

2 Likes

[Shakes giant foam fist] You just want to get it on film!
Honestly, Hillary From The Woods is already 16 films. From the spookless Blackberry Calendar driven Secret Service Supervised pop-in to see that appointments and deprecations go well, through a series of We Found The Other Voters polity films to a delicious Destination sendup…

8 Likes